Have pictures ever turned you off from a doll

For me it is with my old Volks F-07. The first ever promo pics of her as a option part head (from like 2001-2002) were the most unflattering. pics. EVER! I couldnt believe she was even a Volks mold, I just found the head hideous. LOL
YEARS later, I saw a picture of F-07 twins. They were gorgeous. I ended up adopting one of them.
The F-07 was the first mold I ever HATED. lol And now she is my favorite doll. I actually recently sold all my dolls except her and my Tenshis.
So I really try not to look too into owner or promo pics. I like to see the mold without a faceup most times.
*Jen

 

I would have to say, yes. Some of the company photo's that don't really look like they've had a lot of effort put into them. I was thinking earlier of getting a MSD from Leekword and they only had three pictures of him, all of his face and in all of them his hair covered up to his nose! So I didn't really know what I was getting with him.

 

Seeing home photos can admittedly put you off a sculpt a bit - or at least make you feel a little pity for it. Bad faceups, crooked eyes, bad lighting, awkward starey poses. Sometimes you really can't help thinking "Sheesh! That girl would be so pretty if she were someone else's..." ;; If there are a lot of bad home photos of that sculpt, it's no wonder that casual passersby would think that company's dolls weren't very good in real life.

Most of my dolls were bought new from the company, so often there were no home owner-photos to refer to.... this is another risk you accept if you tend to be the early-adopter type, or if you like LE fullsets. But I have managed to choose only faces I love, in the end. Even in cases where the doll didn't look exactly like its sales photo, I have not been disappointed by them as a whole. Quite often the real-life doll looks better than the sales photo.


So = I take an "average" between the best & worst of ALL photos I see of a sculpt, both the site/sales photos & home owner photos. You mentally prepare yourself for a result that's somewhere in between! Even good photos can be SO easily misleading-- nothing is ever going to look exactly the way it does IRL, in your home with your lighting and your surroundings, especially if you are doing your own aesthetics.


(There's also just basic risk involved in buying anything sight-unseen... You always take a little bit of a gamble. Shopping & deciding becomes less stressful when you bear this in mind.)

 

I once thought I really really wanted a DOT Tender E-an but then I saw private pictures of her and I was all no way! She isn't half as pretty in real life as she is in the company's pictures.

 

Private pictures to me can really make or break a sculpt. Like. I have an El. and the site pictures did nothing for me at all. he's much better in person and I personally like him looking dead on in pictures the best.

And the same for the souldoll asen. I was in love with her site pictures, but the more angels I see her at, the more sad she looks and the less I want to get her.

 

I really love IMPL Doll's Christoper--she has an excellent design and gorgeous features, and I like their long slender body sculpts. But for some reason every time I see owner's pictures of Christoper she looks like she has an incredibly round, flat face and a hawkish nose! I feel terrible because she's such a unique girl, but I eventually decided against buying her because of owners photos I haven't yet seen an owner's photo that is as flattering as IMPL's professional pics of her...

 

User pictures have turned me off to a doll. I place a lot of emphasis on posing, so I'm always hitting the picture request threads to check on it. If I see limited posing, the doll is dead to me.

 

Yeah. Way back when I was considering a D.O.C. (I guess this applies to pretty much all of the Dream of Dolls sculpts). They look very nice on the site.
But a lot of user photos really turn me off on them (and they're such common sculpts that there are a lot of user pictures). Perhaps it's just that the website finds the best angles to photograph, and the user photos don't. A lot of times the faces look chubby with sort of pinched features. Occasionally I'll find a photo that reminds me what I liked about the site pictures, but the majority of them really turn me off.

This happens with some of the FairyLand sculpts too, especially the more common ones.

 

Not really. I decide if I like the sculpt, then I look at owner's pictures to see if the doll is how the company pictures showed, and then I think about what sort of face-up/wig/eyes the doll would look good in. Someone else's interpretation of a doll wouldn't detour me from that doll. For example, I plan on getting a Luka the pan, and I don't really like how some people have portrayed him, but it certainly hasn't changed how lovely I find his sculpt.

 

When I first got into the hobby, I just adored RS Mei, but after seeing a few owner pictures of her, it became clear that she was simply too skinny for my taste, so I decided not to get her and keep on searching.

 

For me, it's not so much "oh, i don't like how that doll is styled," it's "oh wow, I don't like that sculpt as much as I had thought from the promo pictures."
I see dolls that I own and love styled in a way that I don't like but I still love my sculpt. What has turned me off from sculpts are seeing pictures of them taken from unflattering angles. It's definitely a scuplt thing.

 

I am guilty of this.

I must admit that I find it terribly difficult to look past all the face-ups, the wigs, the eyes, and the clothes, and just see the sculpt for itself. So, if I tend not to like the face-up (because i think at least some people can agree, if it's not that great, the doll looks terrible), it's hard for me to like it, and think "oh, what a great doll. I would love to own one." But, if i don't like the way one model of the doll is presented, I always looks for others, because everyone presents theirs in a different way. And I may have a change of mind and heart.

 

I have to look at owner pictures, because I'm already to get the doll from the makers photo's. And then I usually don't like the doll after I see the owner pictures, just because I'm so picky. Although sometimes I still like it!

 

This goes both ways for me. I always search for owners' photos because they usually make or break it for me. I've fallen in love with company's photos of a doll before, only to see owner's pictures and been underwhelmed or vice versa.

 

Y-yes...
For example, the new Souldoll Vito boy Lester. The first picture really attracted me, but the more I looked at him, the more I went 'Eeeeughh...' Don't get me wrong, some of the photo's make him look REALLY appealing, while others don't. It's mostly just that some of them are taken at an unattractive angle, I think. I'd love to see a profile shot of him... Or an owner picture. :3

 

Sometimes after seeing the non-professional photos I no longer want that doll. Other times it just doesn't fit with the look I'm going for. And still others it's like everyone already has that doll, I want to get something different.

 

This just happened to me again. A doll that I've been drooling after is being re-released, and I was looking up owner pictures before I took the plunge.

It's a doll you don't see often, so the same doll shows up a lot. One of the owners who posts pictures more frequently than the others did a mod that I just... I hate it. Now every time I see the doll in the company pictures or other owners' shots, all I can think about is that horrible, horrible mod.

 

It seems that sometimes the company is very very careful not to show certain angles. But in owner pictures you can see all angles and not all angles are flattering. Or in the case of BBB/RS... they have terrible company pictures. Elena? All you see is a CHIN! People have to take a gamble or search for owner pics to see what the doll really looks like. Turns out I liked the sculpt so I bought her (some angles do weird things to her eye sockets in pictures... but she can be rather beautiful).

For me it's not so much what the owner dresses the doll in... if I can see the sculpt and it gives me a better 3D image in my brain, it's helpful.

 

Oh definitely! I hate the pictures VOLKS uses for their dolls..it's such horrid photography. I went in person to the Volks store near my house, and fell in love! My goodness they are gorgeous in person..so many that I would have never even considered from seeing the ugly site pictures, I absolutely wanted to take home with me when seeing them in person.

You would think that the companies especially one such as Volks, would want to take better quality photos of their gorgeous sculpts so people aren't turned off by them, because in person they are quite amazing.

 

Absolutely. A doll that I didn't like at all in the promo shots looked gorgeous in owner photos. And another doll I loved in the promo shots looked dreadful in owner pics. So then I'm thinking, did the company just make the doll look awesome w/great photography or did I not happen to like the wig, etc. the owner had on it? I think different face-ups and wigs can totally transform a doll's personality.